American Jewish identity has changed significantly over the course of the past half century. During this time, Irving Greenberg developed a unique theology that anticipated David Hollinger's notion of postethnicity and represents a compelling understanding of contemporary American Jewish identity. Greenberg's covenantal theology and image of God idea combine into what Kleinberg refers to as Hybrid Judaism. Central to Greenberg's theology is recognition of the transformative power of encounter in an open society, heavily influenced by his own encounters across Jewish denominational boundaries and through his participation in the Christian-Jewish dialogue movement. Presented here for the first time, Greenberg’s theology of Hybrid Judaism has great relevance for our understanding of American Jewish identity in the twenty-first century.

Darren Kleinberg was ordained by Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in 2005 and completed his doctorate in Religious Studies from Arizona State University in 2014. He currently serves as Head of School at Kehillah Jewish High School, in Palo Alto, California. Prior to arriving at Kehillah, he was the Founding Executive Director of Valley Beit Midrash in Phoenix, Arizona.

Table of Contents

AcknowledgmentsPrefaceIntroduction

Part IChapter 1: Irving Greenberg and the Changing American Jewish LandscapeChapter 2: The Study and Reality of Religion in AmericaChapter 3: The Arc, Part 1: From Melting Pot to Triple Melting PotChapter 4 The Arc, Part 2: From Multiculturalism to Postethnicity

Reviews:

In Hybrid Judaism, Darren Kleinberg presents a comprehensive and sophisticated analysis of Rabbi Irving Greenberg’s mature thoughts on a host of subjects crucial to modern Jewish life and religious thought, and does so by situating him against the larger backdrop of American religious history and sociology. In this insightful and compelling portrait of Greenberg, Kleinberg has helped us understand how this preeminent Jewish thinker was shaped by the American setting as well as the critical role Greenberg has played in defining the nature and overall directions of modern Judaism. This book is required reading for anyone who wishes to understand Judaism in the modern world as well as American religion as it moves on into the 21st Century.

— David Ellenson, Director, Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University and Chancellor-Emeritus, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

For the past half century Rabbi Yitz Greenberg’s role as an innovative institution builder and thinker on issues related to the Holocaust are well known. Kleinberg underscores the significance of Greenberg’s importance as a Jewish thinker by presenting a full analysis of Greenberg’s novel conception of Hybrid Judaism. Kleinberg traces the growth of Greenberg’s thinking, situating it within Greenberg’s rich and complex life experiences.

American Jewry is in the midst of a sustained period of introspection and re-organization. This is playing out along any number of axes: The repercussions of the Holocaust, the significance of the State of Israel, withering denominational and institutional divisions, and the polarization of religious and political commitments. In this volume, Kleinberg makes a strong case for Yitz Greenberg as one of the leading thinkers of this period, whose writings shape not only how we understood Jewish life in the 20th century, but how we ought to understand it in the 21st.